Legislation for Direct Reimbursement to PAs - IMPORTANT

Last Friday, April 13th, legislation for direct reimbursement to PAs was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives. HR 5506, is a potential huge step in furthering our profession and is major part of the Optimal Team Practice (OTP) policy adopted by the AAPA last year. This is an issue that we cannot fix in state law and needs to be done at the federal level.

This bill, if passed, would require Medicare to directly reimburse PAs for their work. This doesn’t mean the money goes directly to you, but you will be “given credit” for the work that you already do that is currently billed under your supervising physician. The way things are now, it is difficult to gauge exactly how “valuable” a PA is to practice, hospital, or health system.

Please read the AAPA release if you have not already and contact your U.S. House of Representative to encourage them to co-sponsor and support this legislation. Below is a link to the AAPA release and in the last paragraph, a link to the AAPA Advocacy Action Center where you can easily send a letter to your Representative (Kevin Cramer in ND). You need to be member of the AAPA to use their system of sending a letter. If you are not a member, I encourage you to become one. You also can simply send one of your own as well.

The NDAPA is sending a letter today on behalf of our members, but we have strength in numbers and more contacts to our representatives will make a bigger impact.